1. Technical Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of accessing emergency services telephonically using a telecommunications or data communication network, and more particularly to accessing particular types of emergency services.
2. Description of Related Art
People who use wireless phones, like all other people in the world, may encounter emergencies of one sort or another, and those wireless phone users may consequently want to use their wireless phones to seek emergency assistance. This may occur, for example, in a wireless system according to the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Telecommunications System, which is substantially synonymous with wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA), and with Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). 3GPP represents a stage in the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), wherein an emergency call code is defined for making emergency calls. Typically in GSM, an emergency number is used to indicate that an emergency call must be initiated, and then an emergency call setup is performed, the setup being specialized in order to get priority in the network. The particular emergency number actually dialed by the user is of little importance, as long as the emergency is recognized and indicated in the call setup, and the call is then routed to an emergency center based on the call setup.
It is common for mobile terminals (hereinafter also called mobile devices or mobile phones) to include removable smart cards (UICC) which contain a Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM). The UICC is an IC card, and thus the UICC holds an integrated circuit containing subscriber data, end user data, authentication data, and/or application data for one or more applications. Emergency call codes are stored in the UICC in a data file named “Emergency Call Codes” (EFECC). This elementary file can contain one or more emergency call codes. When the user dials a number on the keyboard (e.g. 911) it is compared with the number stored in EFECC. If the number entered from the keyboard matches a number in EFECC, the call is set up as an emergency call, regardless of what that particular number is.
If there are different particular numbers used for emergency calls to the police, ambulance and fire brigade, that can be indicated by sending the particular dialed number to the network during the emergency call setup. On a national level, this has been achieved by using different emergency numbers, and systems have also been devised to deal with this task at the international level. See, for example, the application of Rune Lindholm at United States Patent Publication U.S. 2001/0051514 published Dec. 13, 2001.
Unfortunately, current 3GPP specifications have problems with typed emergency calls, meaning emergency calls that are directed to a particular type of emergency instead of being directed to a general emergency response center. For instance, Japan has different emergency call numbers for police, ambulance/fire and coast guard. These different emergency call types are routed to different emergency centers. However, Release 99 (“R99”) terminals do not support these typed (i.e. specialized) emergency calls.
The 3GPP prepared the R99 set of specifications in December 1999, and the full set of R99 specifications was substantially frozen by March of 2000. R99 is not followed by any Release 2000, because it was felt necessary to move away from annual releases. Instead, R99 was followed by Release 4 (Rel-4), as a functionally enhanced version of R99, in March of 2001, and then Rel-5 was issued in March 2002. Rel-4 introduced, among other things, enhanced emergency call handling. Each of these releases includes hundreds of specifications, and each release is maintained in its own right, rather than being a correction or adjustment to the previous release.
Returning now to the Japan example, if Japan introduces typed emergency calls, by adding a list of typed emergency numbers on the removable Rel-4 smart cards (UICC) in each R99 terminal, then those terminals would be able to read the added list, but those R99 terminals would treat all the listed numbers as untyped (i.e. general) emergency call numbers. Because the emergency call set-up would not carry the dialed number information to the network, it is therefore impossible to route these emergency calls from R99 terminals to correct emergency centers. Because of this “cross-release” problem, Japan and other countries are often not able to put typed emergency calls into use.
Typed emergency calls work satisfactorily when Rel-4 or later terminals use UICC that contain a Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) including a typed emergency number list, and of course untyped emergency calls now work well in all releases. However, there are no known proposals regarding how to solve the problems of cross-release incompatibility involving a terminal corresponding to a release prior to Rel-4.